Where those associated with Western films from around the world are laid to rest.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

RIP Darren Rydstrom

Rapid City native dies in chopper crash

Rapid City Journal

February 12, 2013

• Mary Garrigan Journal staff

Jeri Rydstrom of Rapid City got a call Saturday night
from her cameraman son in Los Angeles wishing her a happy birthday and telling
her he was excited to be on his way to a nighttime helicopter shoot.

"He was working on a reality TV show on how a Navy
SEAL survives in adverse conditions," Rydstrom said of her son, Darren.

It would be the final time they spoke. Darren Rydstom,
46, died early Sunday morning when the helicopter he was working from crashed
in the pre-dawn hours in a rugged canyon in Southern California.

Rydstrom, a graduate of Rapid City Stevens High School,
was killed along with the pilot and a former U.S. Army Special Forces member
who were in the helicopter. They were filming a reality TV show for the
Discovery Channel.

The helicopter crashed at about 3:40 a.m. Sunday at the
popular filming location of Polsa Rosa Ranch in the city of Acton, authorities
said. Coroner's spokesman Ed Winter identified the victims Monday as David Gene
Gibbs, 59, of Valencia, Calif.; Michael William Donatelli, 45, of Indiana, Pa.,
and Rydstrom, now of Whittier, Calif.

"We are all cooperating fully with authorities. Our
thoughts and prayers go out to the families," the station said in a
statement.

The Discovery Channel production company, Eyeworks USA,
best known for creating NBC's "The Biggest Loser," issued a statement
expressing sympathy to the victims' families. The cause and other circumstances
surrounding the crash were still unknown, Federal Aviation Administration
spokesman Allen Kenitzer said.

It was the site of another entertainment industry death
in September, when a 48-year-old crew member died of an apparent heart attack
while underwater in scuba gear on the set of the upcoming Johnny Depp film
"The Lone Ranger."

Sunday's wreck was also 25 miles from a similar rural
spot in Santa Clarita where actor Vic Morrow and two children were killed in
another helicopter crash while filming the "Twilight Zone" movie in
1982.

Rydstrom's mother is the former co-owner of the Rochford
Mall, an art gallery and gift shop in the tiny Black Hills hamlet that also
sold Darren Rydstrom's photos from the Sturgis rally.

Her son loved Rochford and came back every summer during
the rally to shoot professional portraits of bikers and their motorcycles
there.

"He had a huge following there," she said.

A 1985 graduate of Rapid City Stevens, Rydstrom's career
as a director of photography that would take him around the world had its
beginning in a childhood love of cameras. Friends and family remember him as
usually having a camera in his hands.

"He was the biggest pain in the neck because he had
his eye in a lens all the time," his mother said. "He just did goofy
things with the camera all the time." She recalled the time he filmed his
sisters jumping on a trampoline and he reversed the film to make their dog
appear to jump backward with them.

But his Hollywood career got its "jump start"
at the Sturgis rally, his mother said, when he met a film crew and director in
town for the rally who would help him get started in the industry and become
his mentor.

"His first job in California was with them,"
she said. "He traveled all over the world — he's done feature length
movies, television shows, commercials. And he got awards for his work in a
cut-throat business like that. I couldn't have been more proud of him."

Rydstrom came back several times a year to visit family
still living in Rapid City, including his father, Don Rydstrom, and his sister,
Diana Springstead. Another sister, Jennifer Dunlap, lives in Tulsa, Okla.

"He comes back several times a year. He was last
back in November to go pheasant hunting with me," Jeri Rydstrom said.

Her birthday present, he told her in that last phone
call, was private golf lessons with his good friend and high school classmate
JR Hamblet. He planned to visit in March so they could golf together, she said.

About Me

Born in Toledo, Ohio in 1946 I have a BA degree in American History from Cal St. Northridge. I've been researching the American West and western films since the early 1980s and visiting filming sites in Spain and the U.S.A. Elected a member of the Spaghetti Western Hall of Fame 2010.